Conversely, nouns are created from verbs. “Hit don’t make no differ.” “I didn’t hear no give-out at meetin’” (announcement). “You can git ye one more gittin’ o’ wood up thar.” “That Nantahala is a master shut-in, jest a plumb gorge.” Or from an adjective: “Them bugs—the little old hatefuls!” “If anybody wanted a history of this county for fifty years he’d git a lavish of it by reading that mine-suit testimony.” Or from an adverb: “Nance tuk the biggest through at meetin’!” (shouting spell). An old lady quoted to me in a plaintive quaver:
“It matters not, so I’ve been told,
Where the body goes when the heart grows cold;
“But,” she added, “a person has a rather about where he’d be put.”
In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in begun, drunk, holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum. Holp is used both as preterite and as infinitive: the o is long, and the l distinctly sounded by most of the people, but elided by such as drop it from almost, already, self (the l is elided from help by many who use that form of the verb).
Examples of a strong preterite with dialectical change of the vowel are bruk, brung, drap or drapped, drug, friz, roke or ruck (raked), saunt (sent), shet, shuck (shook), whoped (long o). The variant whupped is a Scotticism. Whope is sometimes used in the present tense, but whup is more common. By some the vowel of whup is sounded like oo in book (Mr. Fox writes “whoop,” which, I presume, he intends for that sound).
In many cases a weak preterite supplants the proper strong one: div, driv, fit, gi’n or give, rid, riv, riz, writ, done, run, seen or seed, blowed, crowed, drawed, growed, knowed, throwed.
There are many corrupt forms of the verb, such as gwine for gone or going, mought (mowt) for might, dim, het, ort or orter, wed (weeded), war (was or were—the a as in far), shun (shone), cotch (in all tenses) or cotched, fotch or fotched, borned, hurted, dremp.
Peculiar adjectives are formed from verbs. “Chair-bottoming is easy settin’-down work.” “When my youngest was a leetle set-along child” (interpreted as “settin’ along the floor”). “That Thunderhead is the torndowndest place!” “Them’s the travellinest hosses ever I seed.” “She’s the workinest woman!” “Jim is the disablest one o’ the fam’ly.” “Damn this fotch-on kraut that comes in tin cans!”
A verb may serve as an adverb: “If I’d a-been thoughted enough.” An adverb may be used as an adjective: “I hope the folks with you is gaily” (well). An adjective can serve as an adverb: “He laughed master.” Sometimes a conjunction is employed as a preposition: “We have oblige to take care on him.”
These are not mere blunders of individual illiterates, but usages common throughout the mountains, and hence real dialect.